Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
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It may take our support staff between 24-48 hours to respond to your problem. We are a small business and strive to answer your questions as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience.
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Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
Hi-
I had a dual-boot Windows XP/Windows 7 system working fine. Each OS was installed on a different drive, and I had a choice which to boot to on startup. I'd installed Windows 7 on an older Maxtor IDE drive and it was a little noisy so I decided to clone it to a newer SATA drive using Acronis True Image. I tested it for a while to make sure the cloned drive worked, and it was fine.
My drives were all out of the PC case during this for a totally unrelated reason, and when I hooked them back up I started having problems. I don't think I installed them in the original order, and maybe that's the problem, but I've tried all available boot disk priorities. My motherboard is an ASUS PB5-E, if that helps.
I still get the option to boot into XP or Windows 7, but only the XP boot works. Windows 7 comes up with a blank screen or a "recovered" option, but none of the recovery options work.
So now I have 2 drives with identical Windows 7 installations, along with a bunch of programs and registry settings, etc., but I can't boot into Windows 7.
The BIOS recognizes all of my SATA drives, as does Device Manager in XP.
If I remove the original Win 7 (IDE) boot disk and use the cloned drive I get the "Windows 7 (recovered)" boot option, but once it gets past the Welcome screen, the wheel spins for a while, then the screen goes dark.
If I boot in Safe Mode and choose "Repair Computer" it goes through all the tests and finds no errors.
If I boot using the original (IDE) boot disk I get the same Win 7 (recovered) boot option, but the Repair fails, complaining about an unnamed device driver.
I must have done something wrong somewhere along the way, but I'd think with 2 "bootable" Win 7 drives one would work!
Any suggestions before I try a System Restore or re-install Win 7?
Thanks!
-Susan
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
Can you post a screen shot of your Disk Management, and your boot.ini
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ASUS Maximus V Gene MB
Windows 8 X64; Windows 7 X64; Windows 7 X86
Intel I5-3570K
16GB Corsair Vengeance Ram
eVGA GeForce GTX 550 TI
Corsair GS700 PS
1TB Seagate SATA 6.0Gb HD
Thermaltake Case
- yeshuas
- Software Development
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- Real Name: Daniel Schmidt
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
Hi yeshuas-
Update since my last post:
I got the IDE drive working, so I can now dual-boot into XP or Win 7 (I think -- I'll have to restart once more to be sure).
So that's definite progress, but I still have the initial issue. I cloned the IDE Win 7 drive to a SATA drive using Acronis True Image Home 2010, and even though the "Automatic" option indicated it would make the drive bootable, I can't boot from it.
The IDE drive is noisy, so I'd really like to use a SATA drive instead.
Thanks-
-Susan
Update since my last post:
I got the IDE drive working, so I can now dual-boot into XP or Win 7 (I think -- I'll have to restart once more to be sure).
So that's definite progress, but I still have the initial issue. I cloned the IDE Win 7 drive to a SATA drive using Acronis True Image Home 2010, and even though the "Automatic" option indicated it would make the drive bootable, I can't boot from it.
The IDE drive is noisy, so I'd really like to use a SATA drive instead.
Thanks-
-Susan
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
If you ahve your Visat DVD, disconnect he IDE drive and boot to the Vista DVD and do a startup repair.
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- NT50
- PROfessional Member
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- Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:46 pm
- Location: Jackson, TN USA
- Real Name: Jeff Replogle
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
Hi NT50-
Thanks for the suggestion, but I already tried that. It's Windows 7, and when I run the startup repair on the cloned drive it says it can't find any problems.
I'm going to try the clone again from the Rescue CD.
Thanks-
-Susan
Thanks for the suggestion, but I already tried that. It's Windows 7, and when I run the startup repair on the cloned drive it says it can't find any problems.
I'm going to try the clone again from the Rescue CD.
Thanks-
-Susan
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
If you have to copy the file AND folder form the DVD "bootmgr" (file) and "Boot" (folder & contents) to the root of the win 7 drive. Then do a startup repair.
Dogs Have Owners; Cats Have Staff
- NT50
- PROfessional Member
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- Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:46 pm
- Location: Jackson, TN USA
- Real Name: Jeff Replogle
Re: Dual XP/Win 7 boot no longer working
Hi Jeff-
I'm hoping the Rescue CD will take care of it. At this point I'm waiting for definitive word from Acronis re when to disconnect my original boot drive, since I don't remember seeing an option to shut down after the cloning was complete, and I think that's where I messed up in the first place. This is with ATI Home 2010, in case anyone here's familiar with that.
Thanks-
-Susan
I'm hoping the Rescue CD will take care of it. At this point I'm waiting for definitive word from Acronis re when to disconnect my original boot drive, since I don't remember seeing an option to shut down after the cloning was complete, and I think that's where I messed up in the first place. This is with ATI Home 2010, in case anyone here's familiar with that.
Thanks-
-Susan
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